The red camellia was hung in the shrine by a red string.
Luo Yu'an was sure that the clan god must really like red camellia, so she collected all the red paper on the incense sticks, folded a large bunch of red camellia, and rolled up the paper to make flower branches - this was one of the ways she used to coax her sister when she was young.
The sisters' parents died early. She, the elder sister, was several years older than her younger sister. Her younger sister was in the sixth grade of elementary school and she was a freshman in college. So she often used small toys to coax her younger sister at that time. For a long time, the vase in her younger sister's room was filled with colorful decorative paper flowers folded by her.
The red paper used to wrap the incense sticks was of very good quality, and there were gold patterns on it, so it was also very beautiful to fold camellia flowers. Although the scene of offering this bunch of red paper flowers to the god looked a bit strange, as if it was some old-fashioned courtship scene, Luo Yu'an herself did not feel anything. After all, she did not dare to have any thoughts about the god, and the god certainly did not feel anything either. However, from the arc of his smile, he did not show any rejection and accepted it with pleasure.
The bouquet was treated the same as the previous one, hung in the shrine with red strings, and was at the innermost layer, which was much better than Luo Yu'an's own treatment. Luo Yu'an only slept on the outermost layer of the shrine at night. Because of such a small thing, Luo Yu'an was strangely not afraid of the red strings anymore.
At first she thought that Shi Shen only liked red camellia, but when he took her out to eat a few times, she saw Shi Shen stopping to admire other flowers and he seemed to like them as well.
"Do you like these flowers? If so, why not have them planted in your yard?"
"Ujigami does not favor anything," Ujigami answered her.
Luo Yu'an didn't quite understand, but she looked carefully from Shi Shen's smile, his curved eyes, his flowing hair, and his rolled-up sleeves, and only made out two big words.
-want to.
There was a small bottle on the altar of the shrine, with two fresh flowers picked from the roadside outside the courtyard in it.
The women of the clan were completely unaware of the extra flowers on the altar, except for the clan god who occasionally looked at the two ordinary flowers when he sat on the altar. They would often wither after a day or two, but before they withered, the person who quietly put them in the vase would replace them with new flowers.
Compared with the expensive, carefully cultivated and selected fruits next to it, this is really a shabby offering.
Luo Yu'an felt ashamed of her "borrowing flowers to offer to Buddha". The flowers were picked from the roadside, and the glass bottle was a small bottle for beverages from the kitchen. She was too embarrassed to say that it was a gift, so she could only silently mix it with the fruit snacks as an offering.
As an ordinary person, she is always afraid of God, but on the other hand, God appears to be very gentle and harmless, and she can only rely on him. She is also often confused by his appearance that is too human, and thinks he is just a boy about the same age as her sister.
Luo Yu'an had been taken to eat by Shi Shen many times by pulling his sleeve, and she could face it calmly. Most of the time, they would not go when there were many people in the cafeteria, but sometimes they would go at the right time, so Luo Yu'an took the food and shrank to a separate room with the least people, where only two people were eating.
The two old ladies would drink tea and chat for a while after dinner. Luo Yu'an would listen to them while eating.
"When I went to the shrine to burn incense to the god these two days, I seemed to smell a foul odor."
"I smelled it too, faintly. What's going on?"
"I think the sacrifice that escaped earlier died in a corner of the yard and started to rot, so there is a bit of a stink?"
"It's possible. He's been hiding for so long, he must have starved to death. We need to quickly follow the smell and find the body and deal with it."
"The stench is near the shrine. Could that person be hiding under the shrine?"
"How can an ordinary person not be afraid of the god? I'm afraid they are crazy."
Luo Yu'an ate in silence, feeling that the two old ladies were talking about a mouse that had died in some corner of the house.
Then... She stretched out her arms and sniffed her own scent. It seemed that it really smelled a bit, which made her feel very ashamed. She also wanted to take a bath, but there was no place to take a bath in that yard. If she wanted to leave the yard, she had to be accompanied by the god. She didn't dare to trouble the god, so she kept delaying.
It’s really necessary to clean it up now, otherwise it will disturb the old god.
"Take a bath?" Ujigami seemed to have just been reminded and said with a smile, "Yes, humans need to clean their bodies."
Luo Yu'an, who made this request, was relieved to see that Shi Shen did not mind the trouble. Shi Shen floated in front, and she chased after him and found a bathhouse. The bathhouse in this house is the same as the canteen. It looks ancient on the outside, but once you walk in, it is built to a standard and comfortable standard. There are more than a dozen partitioned bathrooms and a bathtub.
It was indeed comfortable to finally take a good hot bath, but the process was terrifying, not because the god was floating nearby, but because other people came into the bathhouse halfway through the bath, and she finally realized that this was a men's bathhouse.
She was in the innermost room, and people entered the rooms next to her, chatting as they took a bath. The brothers seemed to be responsible for guarding the shrine courtyard. Although they looked cold and serious on the surface, they were actually very talkative while taking a bath.
Luo Yu'an listened to them talking about everything from the shift cycle to where to go after their vacation, and then to Ujigami.
After hearing a few words occasionally in the yard outside during this period of time, Luo Yu'an already knew that the clan god was the clan god of the Qin family. The Qin family was a large and prosperous family because it was blessed by gods. These people were selected from the Qin family. Except for the two clan girls, the rest would be rotated after a period of time.
"I heard from the clan girl that the clan god that awakened this time is very gentle. Qin Minglang and Qin Mingcheng made such a big mistake before and neglected the sacrifice, but they didn't deprive them of their surnames. They just drove them to the marginal area."
"Then our escort mission this time should be relatively easy. At least no one will die."
"The one two years ago was the worst. The god who awakened that time was cruel. The Qin clan members who made mistakes during his awakening had a bad ending. Even two guards died because he discovered their misconduct. And the one who favored 'punishment' was very fond of it. The babies who were sent to the family to receive 'blessings' that year will probably be influenced and become 'cruel officials' in the future."
"Speaking of this, there was one time before. Do you know my great uncle Qin Feijun? He is now the chief judge and is known as the 'walking code'. It is said that the year my great uncle was born, the clan god awakened and his personality was particularly harsh and cruel, so the children of my great uncle who were blessed by the clan god were also affected. They modified the laws they had made. And in the cases that my great uncle judged as a judge, the criminals all received the most severe punishments."
Luo Yu'an listened to the gossip, his head lowered. These people didn't know that while they were gossiping about their clan god, the clan god himself was sitting in the bathroom partition next to them, listening quietly with a gentle smile.
Raising his head and glancing upwards, Luo Yu'an saw the drooping white sleeves of Shishen and quickened his bathing pace.
While those people were still taking a shower, Luo Yu'an quickly changed into a clean bathrobe and slipped out, pulling up Shi Shen's sleeve again and going back under his guidance. The corridor she walked through when she first came here was still dimly lit, but she didn't feel scared anymore, and even wanted to chat.
"Do you fall asleep every once in a while?"
Ujigami smiled and nodded.
"So, every time you wake up you'll have a different personality?"
Ujigami smiled and nodded.
"Do you remember what happened before?"
Luo Yu'an asked three times in a row. Only the sound of her light footsteps echoed in the corridor.
Ujigami finally stopped smiling and nodded. His tone of voice slowly sank like the setting sun: "Ujigami will not forget anything. Every family's shikigami is an increasingly bloated family tree and family records."
Luo Yu'an was surprised, "Every family... Is there another clan god besides you?"
Ujigami tilted his head, his smiling expression like a frozen mask on the statue, and he said: "This world is not as simple as ordinary people see it."
The wind whistled through the corridor, blowing through her empty bathrobe, making her feel a little cold.
Yes, the true appearance of this secret world has just been revealed to me. Luo Yu'an did not try to ask any more questions. He saw a bunch of chrysanthemums in full bloom on the roadside, picked two branches and held them in his hand, ready to go back and replace the flowers in the shrine that were about to wither.
"Why do I feel like the offerings that have been replaced recently are occasionally a little less?"
"That faint stench is gone too."
"There's still no trace of the hidden sacrifice. Where did it die? We can't find it. Could it be that Ujigami has already dealt with it?"
"It is truly a shame for us to have Ujigami personally handle such a small matter."
Luo Yu'an heard the two girls' routine chatter, and she left after dinner without any ripples in her heart. She lived in this old house like a living ghost. Compared to being scared by them at the beginning, she felt that it should be the other way around now. If she showed any signs one day, she would probably scare the two girls.
The young girls who were studying with the two clan maids seemed to be trained as the next maids. Although the clan maids emphasized that serving the clan god was the only thing in life and hoped that the successors would concentrate on their studies, two of them were always not very serious and would hide away to play with their mobile phones.
Luo Yu'an hadn't seen a mobile phone for a long time. Once, she happened to see two people playing with their mobile phones. She couldn't help but lean over to take a look. Shi Shen also followed her wishes. Luo Yu'an stood beside the two girls and leaned over to look at their mobile phone screens, while Shi Shen floated aside and watched.
The two girls were playing a game. Luo Yu'an had never played it before, but she remembered that her sister seemed to have played this game before. She couldn't help feeling close to the two girls.
The game was well made. The two of them concentrated on controlling the little characters in the game to fight. Shi Shen looked at it for a while and asked, "What is this?"
"It's the cell phones, they were playing games." Luo Yu'an hesitated, "If you are interested in this, you can ask the daughters of the clan to offer their cell phones." She said this with a little selfishness, as she had been away from the life she was familiar with for too long, and she wanted to get more exposure to the world she was familiar with.
Ujigami said calmly, "Ujigami doesn't favor anything."
Luo Yu’an: “…” Such familiar words.
Although he won't ask for it actively, he will still accept it if it's in front of him. Is that what you mean? Luo Yu'an guessed based on his experience of communicating with his teenage sister.
Ujigami, should we say that he is like an old man who is not good at making requests and just likes to wait for others to guess, or like a young boy who wants something but doesn't ask for it and wants others to guess
Although she didn't get the phone, she could see many people using their phones in secret if she looked carefully when she went outside the courtyard every day. Some were making calls, chatting, reading the news, and playing games. Luo Yu'an would pull the sleeve of the clan god every time she saw it. If she could pull it, it meant that the clan god allowed her to go over and take a look.
It was allowed every time.
Through such behavior, Luo Yu'an finally felt connected to the real world again, and the occasional push news on her mobile phone also contained things she was familiar with.
Without anyone noticing, Luo Yu'an and Shi Shen looked through almost all of their cell phones. So some secrets were exposed, such as a guard who was dating several lovers at the same time without telling his wife.
The man put down his phone and went to get something. Luo Yu'an stood aside and looked at the phone, a hesitant look on his face. He looked at Shi Shen with hesitation as if he wanted to say something.
Ujigami smiled and nodded.
Luo Yu'an instantly felt that Shi Shen understood what she was thinking and expressed his support. So she picked up her phone and quickly added all the wives and lovers of the man to a group, then shared all the chat screenshots, and quickly put the phone back before the man came back.
After doing all this, she looked at Ujigami and couldn't help but smile.
Ujigami still had that same smiling expression, but after a while, he tilted his head slightly in confusion, as if asking, "What are you doing?"
Luo Yu'an tilted his head unconsciously, showing the same puzzled expression: "...?" You don't know what I was doing just now? Doesn't that nod mean tacit consent